A user suggests that this English entry be cleaned up giving the reason: "Sense 3 as Chaucer is Middle English. (Does "one of either gender" apply to New English too or do "originally" and the Chaucer quote mean that it's older (Anglo-Saxon, Middle English)? Is it really "originally", or Middle English by extension?)".

Please see the discussion on Requests for cleanup(+) for more information and remove this template after the problem has been dealt with.

She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace, […]; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid, […]—all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth, and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher.